This doesn't even impress me, just another piece of this hole mess call world.

Paul, from what I observed from widely-circulated video footage of Churchill's defense following his cancelled [censored] lectures back in early '05, you're probably correct in noting that academia fears the attraction professors like Churchill have for students. Young people have an uncanny ability to sense bullshit, but are not always equipped with the tools to get around it, and it is the rare educator who can help students learn to learn. I just read about a similar case here. The relevant adminstrator seems to be backing the professor at the moment, though. Speaking of bullshit, I read that ACTA highlights thing. The witchunt is official and the lies are thick. The fact that they quickly brush off the issue at hand---whether there was any professional misconduct---is telling. The witchhunt also extends outside of academia. The case of artist Steve Kurtz (probably known to many readers here) is interesting in this context. Here, however, instead of attempting to publicly disgrace him and ruin his career, the Justice Department has raised the consequences considerably. Those unfamiliar can check this out: Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund.

Here is another little witchunt story suggesting the dangerous post-9/11 skies that academic birds are flying in these days.  Sixty state legislators in Tailgunner Joe McCarthy's home state are trying to secure the discharge of a UW-Madison prof (who is only a part-time instructor) for his stated ideas on Dick Cheney's alleged involvement in 9/11. 

jdcasten the liberal academic Juan Cole some time ago pointed out that one of the big reasons "conservatives"/Republican are underrepresented in the liberal arts and social sciences is that most right-wingers with the basic skill-set involved in being an academic (moderately competent reading, writing, and speaking) want to cash in on their human capital to a greater degree than they likely would in academia.  I suspect that's a big part of the difference.  Make it so you can get rich by being an English, sociology, or history  professor and Republican applications will increase to graduate programs.  

I read the “Highlights from ‘How Many Ward Churchills?'” that Paul linked to, and found the vocabulary used quite familiar—terms and phrases like “indoctrination,” “propaganda,” “push political agendas in the name of teaching students to think critically,” and “tell them what to think,” were used to characterize their opponents; while ACTA pressed for “accountability,” “responsibility,” and openness to “criticism” and “multiple perspectives.” Of course, ACTA was careful enough to be non-partisan; but their implicit call for the right kind of “censorship” (not the “wrongful” kind) and their questioning of, in addition to “political advocacy,” – Oh Jeez – “activism, sensitivity training, and social change,” is telling. Basically, it sounds like ACTA endorses impossibly neutral robot instructors that are somehow not “contaminated” by an ideologically saturated culture, who might have “unbiased” material selections and observations, without even the slightest wink of approval or disapproval—and yet these same robot professors would still come up with the conclusion that “activism, sensitivity training, and social change” are suspect at face value. The two (at the time I read the highlights) comments at the end were also revealing. The first comment bemoans the notion that some in the humanities might profess unwarranted authority in economics. As if there were no such thing as inter-disciplinary studies (although there is a limit to how Renaissance a person can become with ever more specializations). The commenter seems to have a problem with the humanities—which seems to be a field or department bias. I would maintain that changing institutional structures can steer vast resources and attention: e.g. establishing the EPA (the Nixon administration did this, probably in response to a general public sentiment) has had consequences lasting long after Nixon's death. Given Lynn Cheney's involvement, I'm surprised ACTA is not after the rare “peace studies” department or program (maybe such a direct assault would be bad PR—best to try some indirect route—like anti-activism). Change is great—for you… as long as you become what “I” already am—e.g. the University system has to change to become more shy of change! The second comment seems to fly in the face of a major premise of ACTA's study—while agreeing that professors were politically biased (I too found that my grade in a history of economics class improved after “refuting” Marx and giving a little less of the original thinking of Casten), the commenter goes on to point out how they simply kissed butt and looked the other way—they were not indoctrinated, but rather, driven into “stronger conviction” of their “own principles.” I am curious as to how “objective” ACTA's research is. I've heard that more people with a college education are Republican (due to wealth?) while more PhD's are Democrat (due to poverty?)—Maybe this is ACTA's true gripe. Yet, this somewhat dated demographic study I found at the Libertarian CATO organization finds that (surprise)—many people are truly Libertarian: An Alternative Analysis of Mass Belief Systems: Liberal, Conservative, Populist, and Libertarian Maybe ACTA, if it has some sort of political agenda, should not be concerned with the “extreme” right-wingers or left-wingers that are easy targets… but with the more subtle winking professors that might sway the all-important undecided and non-partisan vote. The above noted loose logical contradiction (advocating social change for less social change) is human: why do they think humans can't be trusted on free-range universities? Because they lack purely coherent and logical objectivity? My favorite professors were usually the ones with a subjective and personal investment in what they were sharing—sharing a passion for their subject matter be it a science (lets not study climate change?) or an art (let's not read Dickens?). Which is not to say there aren't some interesting ideas implied by ACTAs study. Academia is not elected democratically—some might say you can't poll the truth, and academics are often after the avant-garde (art) or state-of-the-art (science) and largely unconscious real id truth (a higher “reality”), which is to be followed later by the public ego awareness (the “reality” by which we judge sanity). There arises the whole issue of legitimating a field, or a professor's point of view—although a consensus of opinion of similarly educated peers is helpful; a little aberrant DNA is needed here and there—a singular revolution—to jolt and advance the species towards continued survival. This makes me wonder… will Ward Churchill be judged by his real peers (people close to sharing his perspective) and is his “DNA aberrance” beneficial, benign or malignant? (and for whom?) I don't know—maybe Churchill's peers would be the likewise incompetent—and he just might have a few of those who don't have microscopes up their arses looking for crap.

Now jd casten has me thinking of faculty offices as animal zoo cages. 

jdcasten says "there can be a lot of reasons for blackballing individuals; from personal popularity and inside politics to one's school of thought and professed political position. Going on a 'witch-hunt' for a tenured professor is probably much rarer than those cases where people don't get jobs in the first place because of inside and outsider politics."

All true in my experience. And you can be rejected for jobs simply for being too good at their own game...even without political issues. Some time ago the Chronicle of Higher Education ran one of its typically "Anonymous" pieces relating examples where people didn't get hired because their impressive vitas threatened people on the hiring committee. I think this happens quite a bit. In my experience, academicians want to be the big birds in the zoo cage.  They're scared you'll steal their students, their perceived (often imaginary and fantasized) popularity, their spouses, and everything else.

I think they're more concerned about Bird Churchill attracting student visitors than repelling them.    

On the far right there is very serious effort towards a neo-McCarthyite witchunt. Nutcase Lynn Cheney's "American Council of Trustees and Alumni" recently produced a chilling document titled "How Many Ward Churchills?" and there's more of the same out there.

I think Paul is right to smell something sneaky and underhanded with this Ward Churchill investigation. He's obviously taken some risks with his rhetoric, and made some enemies of people who could lose him his job. Some slick maneuvers have been made, which must have seemed like common sense to some—and I think it's that general common sense that can be more scary than an isolated investigation. Churchill is a minority who I think would have as few defenders even in a popular democracy, as he has in a democracy tied to a semi-accountable oligarchy for which he has posed a problem. I see general problem of minority rights in opposition here to “demographic” pressures to uphold some sort of public propriety. Jacques Derrida's lecture, spoken in English, 'The Future of the Profession or the Unconditional University' may be relevant to this topic. In typical Derridian brevity, it's over 2 hours long—and I think it requires a RealPlayer or an equivalent codec. My experience in teaching at a University is Limited—but it seems to me there can be a lot of reasons for blackballing individuals; from personal popularity and inside politics to one's school of thought and professed political position. Going on a “witch-hunt” for a tenured professor is probably much rarer than those cases where people don't get jobs in the first place because of inside and outsider politics. I don't know much about Ward Churchill—He sounds pretty far out in left field; and as much as he may buy into what he's saying, I wonder who, including himself, would mistake him as not trying to be provocative: trying to encourage people to either a) think differently, or b) re-think their own stance; in other words, trying to help people with their critical thinking and education. Then again, his statements put his own open-mindedness in question: maybe some would tolerate him more, if he seemed more tolerant of them (but who wants to tolerate perceived hegemony?) I wonder if any alumni or corporate donors had anything to do with this investigation… again, I don't know much about U Colorado's fund-raising, but I could see “WC in left Fields” causing some hard to explain “embarrassment” and “distraction.” He has interrupted propriety, being as much the opportunist concerning 9/11 as Bush's cadre, albeit on a much less consequential scale (his own academic suicide). Some “ugly pragmatics” of sustaining a university's finances can mean selling out a bit—and edging out environmental niches for rare-birds like WC that the university would-be zoo keepers see as not attracting as many visitors.

Thanks for responding Paul. Seems to me that it would be sufficient to give this one time to see how things progress. If it goes to trial and he is ultimately dismissed, it will be interesting to examine the evidence at that point (my opinion only) - at which point it would be very useful to see what you could dig up for us.

Well, I've looked in to see if there were any further comments on the specifics in the original post and apparently nobody wanted to take the time to actually examine the big U-Colorado footnote investigation and I don't blame readers for that...who has the time and besides academic experience tends by design to be a fairly depressing and boring topic for everyone except academics. One thing I noticed that was consistent with my experience in around the ivory tower is that they made sure to announce the Churchill dismissal during summer vacation. This was probably to discourage protest and discussion on campus. Academic authorities often do their dirty business when everyone is away; it's a nice expression of their cowardice, which their insufferable arrogance is intended to hide.

The lights are still on, but has everyone left the premises? Are there no more issues of import to discuss? Or is everyone on vacation?

Well, Marcus Denton, don't take it from me: check it out and perhaps experience it for yourself. I could not pretend to know what its like for people who come out of the connected elite schools and find good jobs...probably incredibly "nice." Academia is itself class-segregated. I tell young people thinking about history (my former field) to not bother with graduate school unless they're going to an elite program (like Princeton or Yale or UC-Berkeley) and to understand that even then its going to be a long haul. Money to attend and afford long periods out of the normal labor market is a big and class-selective issue (tuition assistance is harder to get). Especially if you are in a graduate program at an elite school and can afford it all, I'd follow through and see where it takes you. It can be a really good situation for some people and some accepted scholars (and yes they make sure to keep their footnotes meticulous) really do inoculate themselves from the elitism of it all to maintain genuinely radical perspectives and public commitments and connectedness all the way through the process. Some field areas (ie, labor history when I knew it [1970s-90s], Latin American studies) have lots of left people. I've seen terrible things in academia, some quite personally painful, generally pepetrated by nominal liberals and even leftists, but I've also seen good stuff happen and don't have to list off all the good names we know about. If you can afford it and are willing to play the game, it can pay off in a big way, but the chances for total frustration are quite high as well. There might be areas besides temping to use the sort of intellectual skills that apply to academic training: anti-poverty or pro-civil rights or civil liberties or environmental law (for examples); research for the labor movement and human rights organizations, inner city teaching; third-party politics; etc. If I were 20-something (not), bright (debatable), and left-wing (definitely) these days, I'd probably be trying to nail the LSAT and get the qualifications to do some sort of progressive legal and related political and (with time) intellectual work. Journalism is a good outlet one would think but it has been really downsized and corporatized and its only getting worse. I'd stay away from the social science and humanities doctoral programs, which have probably sucked up too much left intellectual energy since the 1960s as it is...

Perhaps it's time we start thinking in terms of the aesthetics of education rather than the propects for jobs. Jobs are going to become harder and harder to obtain in this bloodsucking capitalist economy. Education brings far more than a job. It brings with it breadth and depth of knowledge to equip one for social combat. We desperately need folks who are equipped for the fight for leftist ideals, even if they are forced to push Big Macs for a living. There was a time one could make a living from professing his/her ideals. Maybe that time has passed us by. But the battle remains. And we need those who can understand and articulate where modern social mores have fallen short.

You're killing me, Paul. After having a pretty bad experience in Office Space land, I was thinking maybe a move into academia would be the way to go. You get to use your brain, pursuing chosen areas of interest, get some control over your conditions and environment, get to interact with interesting people, some of whom want to be there, decent benefits and pay, it sounded nice.

And now you've ruined it for me. I know, I know, don't shoot the messenger, and I won't hold it against you, but... fuck. Then again, if what you say is true, then I've saved a bunch of time and anguish and disappointment. So perhaps I should thank the messenger. But isn't the test of a workplace's (un)desirability, whether or not one actually works there? Well, there are a lot of factors.

Temp agency here I come!

Marcus

P.S. Regardless of how significant the level of corporate ties our colleges and universities currently have, I think we should still be organizing to keep them as autonomous as possible.

I cannot keep track of the various people (or is it the same person) now named "Anonymous" but will briefly respond to some statements: "The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct gave a unanimous decision, and although I value the input you have given here, I would (begrudgingly) trust the decision the came to after all these months." Street: "A" trusts them because...they worked 'all these months.' Strange logic. "That said, there are a lot of good scholars that the right would love to see removed from academia, but who have not given the ammunition of scholarly misconduct that Churchill has. We should not be treating Churchill with kid gloves here, he F'd up, and it only does us harm defending it. " Street: Yes, Horowitz would probably like to see Eric Foner (a sound and prolific annotator if ever there was one) removed from his position, to give one example. But still no attention to the actual accusations --- the assertion of this terrible misconduct ("F'ing up" in some really horrible way) is taken as a given. And who is this "us?" Perhaps the writer is a left academician? I am not. Leave me out of that category, please. "And for all its faults, Academia is light years better the corporate world. I cant remember who said it, but I read an interview in which someone was discussing and comparing two political parties in the UK (hard right and a moderate left) and said that although there is only an inch difference between the two of them, it within that inch where we live." Street: "Ahead of the corporate world." That's a strange angle; it's different than the corporate world, which itself needs there to be some institutional space for free inquiry and reflection outside the corporation. "Ahead" implies that "the corporate world" is on some possible progression towards free inquiry and expression. Well, it isn't and nobody would really expect it to be. Sadly the space for free inquiry and reflection/expression is eroding in the university, partly under corporate influence. In my experience the academic world in some ways significantly worse than the corporate world because the authoritarianism of the latter is much more open and explicit. One difference that makes academia worse is that big rich corporate CEOs stay big and rich even after you tell they're wrong about something, intellectually. Tell know-it-all professors and other academic authourities they'e wrong about anything and they just freak out; their world starts to collapse around them because their big holy brains and their fancy doctorates are their only claim to what power and status and security they enjoy. They become excessively doctrinaire and defensive about it all. It's a really unpleasant thing to see and I've seen a bit, having witnessed and sparked a few professorial meltdowns myself. "In research integrity means being conspicuously open - not just honest but transparently so. Quoting your own works, under another name, without giving indication that they are your own is the kind of stuff that separates real academic work from the quacks who write papaers about the Secret Astrological Knowledge of Atlantis." Street: Or they could be isolated incidents of laziness and/or exhaustion. One thing about WC is truly remarkable output and often exhaustive documentation and rich annotation. How many books and footnotes has this "A" published? I write books and will testify that finishing them and getting all the annotation and everything else right will just knock the holy bejeezus out of you. The eyes glaze over and the mind goes numb when you write that much and do those many notes. Assuming that the footnote charges are accurate (and this commenter seems to take it as a matter of academic faith that they are), I'd like the committee to tell us what percentage of Churchill footnotes are bad...is it more than .01 percent...1 percent....2 percent? How does the percentage compare with the scholarly average? What is the scholarly average? Also some of the books he is being ripped about for academic misconduct may fall under the section of his resume that he actually calls "Polemics," not academic publications. If so there may be an issue here of whether its appropriate to charge academic misconduct for explicitly nonacademic ("polemic") works. "It is unsuprising that you think this is a political witch hunt. A theif thinks everyone around him is a theif and a political activist thinks everyone else is motivated by politics 24-7 too." Street: the tone turns nasty here. No evidence for the implied assertion that I am on a witch hunt or for the equation of being a political activist with making witch hunts. More flawed logic. "So you will rail on and on about the witch hunt because when the basic issues of acadmic integrity collide with your preferred political 'truth' they become, in your own words, so much 'quibbling over footnotes'. Street: I doubt that many readers would find "railing on and on" to be a very apt characterization of my post or comments. That's a fairly slanderous description IMO. And again the commenter accepts as a matter of faith that WC has committed terrible research crimes and that they aren't selectively "quibbling over footnotes" as part of a political process driven by rightist rage over constitutionally protected comments written in the wake of 9/11. My next blog post will give an example of what I consider much higher criminality in high and noble liberal academe, which is so many "light years ahead of the corporate world."

I agree that this has been a witch hunt in so far as Churchill was the center of attention after he took a stand on 9-11. The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct gave a unanimous decision, and although I value the input you have given here, I would (begrudgingly) trust the decision the came to after all these months. That said, there are a lot of good scholars that the right would love to see removed from academia, but who have not given the ammunition of scholarly misconduct that Churchill has. We should not be treating Churchill with kid gloves here, he F'd up, and it only does us harm defending it.

And for all its faults, Academia is light years better the corporate world. I cant remember who said it, but I read an interview in which someone was discussing and comparing two political parties in the UK (hard right and a moderate left) and said that although there is only an inch difference between the two of them, it within that inch where we live.

But what if they ARE just quibblings over footnotes? It sounds to me that there are a few turns on this story and a lot of opinions (and IF's) over evidence most of us know little about. Personally, I hold Paul in a little higher esteem than to seriously believe that he would dismiss hard evidence of plagiarism if such exists. And in a highly charged and emotional environment such as that at a university where a well-known and controversial professor is being considered for dismissal after a long history of such controversy, I really don't think it unreasonable at all to assume the very real possibility of an extremely high level of politics at play on both sides of the issue. Don't you? Or am I too being a wild-eyed political activist? And as for the thief analogy, did you mean to imply something there as well (why else use it?)? Those are two pretty serious accusations, if indeed that was what you were really about. I don't mind emotive language to argue points, nor do I mind playful banter back and forth, nor would I expect to avoid accusations that one hasn't done his research, or his facts are faulty, or he is merely holding to a prejudiced, narrow-minded position. But to stand up in the midst of a public debate and accuse by implication one of being a thief is pretty serious in my mind. I am hopeful that you simply used an unfortunate choice of words, but personally, I think you owe this site and especially Paul an apology for that remark. I think it stepped across the line. What do you think?

It is unsuprising that you think this is a political witch hunt .

A theif thinks everyone around him is a theif and a political activist thinks everyone else is motivated by politics 24-7 too.

 

So you will rail on and on about the witch hunt because when the basic issues of acadmic integrity collide with your preferred political "truth" they become, in your own words, so much "quibbling over footnotes".

In research integrity means being conspicuously open - not just honest but transparently so.

Quoting your own works, under another name, without giving indication that they are your own is the kind of stuff that separates real academic work from the quacks who write papaers about the Secret Astrological Knowledge of Atlantis.

 

 

Paul, Can I be hearing this correctly? Let me get this straight. Are you saying that you would really turn down the oppotunity to become the first ever Ronald McDonald Professor of Big Mac Economic Theory (a.k.a. The Economics of Killing Children Slowly with Pleasure)? Seriously?

One thing that seems lost in the critical commentary I'm getting here is that I linked and consulted the actual official report on the research misconduct charges. This is a key point. If you want to accuse plaigarism and other related misconduct against WC then set aside a few hours or perhaps days to investigate; don't just assert. I'm hardly siding with an academics' right to plaigarize. I find that the misconduct charges aren't terribly impressive and don't seem to rise to the occasion of dismissal. And of course I'm noting (as even the final committee of investigators did --- the ones who didn't quit [at least one initial investigator decided he didn't want to be part of the state lynching process]) the rather obviously disturbing timing of the whole thing. U-Colorado may well consider writing a buyout check and stay out of court with this; WC may win there. I'm not a big fan of tenure (I've seen it terribly abused in many cases) or academics (even most left ones) of any stripe, but its naive not to acknowledge the right-driven ideological witchunt behind this incident. I've got a couple files full of inadvertently compiled false assertions and dubious citation and argument methods (much of which fits the committee's misconduct standards) culled from the esteemed work of numerous nice power-friendly professors and I guarantee you that no academic authorities would take seriously any effort on my part to get THOSE safely ensconsed perpetrators dismissed. Frothing neo-McCarthyite nutcases like Horowitz get respect from the Chronicle of Higher Education with their rightist campaigns against left academicians. Good luck for any leftist guardian of ethical research and citation methods trying to get a fat and sassy centrist out of the professoriat for transgressions that make WC's alleged crimes look small time. Nobody's going to write ZNetters a check to review the footnotes of the predominantly nonleft academic class. Beyond bad timing and poor choice of words, what really gets WC in trouble with the academic authorities is not research misconduct but the that he's a professor who professes and that's risky in my experience. Especially now in the post-9/11 period and with the persistent deepening corporate takeover (already well underway before the jetliner attacks) of higher education, professors are supposed to "lay low" and just disseminate ruling doctrine and flatter white middle-class young adults who feel entitled to coast through their nice little undergraduate experience to privileged high-income careers while being permitted to remain intentionally ignorant of injustice and oppression at home and abroad. Most academics don't want to f**ck up a good thing (and lifetime job security is a pretty good thing.... for them at least) and can be counted on to play along and be good little lecturers and proctors and committee members and doctrine managers.....and to stay away from professing. That's a much bigger form of criminality than a weak or misleading footnote or a bad scholarly argument. And I am not at all impressed with the extent to which academia is a refuge from corporate control.

There are indeed two isues in this. Academic Freedom and First Amendment Rights, and integrity. I will defend Churchill's right to say what he has to say, but I will not defend his right to plagiarise in the process. It's a clear distinction. Of course, the powers to be might well have used the plagiarism issue to rid itself at last of a person with questionable opinion. But that's not really the point, is it?

Protecting dissenting opinions that don't jive with “mainstream” thought is one thing. Protecting dissenters who say the right thing, like Churchill, but who corrupt an academic process that reinforces our values is unacceptable. If we continue to stand up for people like Churchill, it's handing ammunition to our opponents, and they have exploited that weakness for far to long.  

Actually there are lots of reasons people don't take the Left seriously, but this doesn't appear to be one of them. And yes, the WC affair is about controlling dissenting thought, and it's pretty transparent.

Not too long ago, when I was organizing in college, Lynne Cheney's group caused some concerted discussion amongst our student-faculty activist group after they published a report about academics not doing their part in the war on terror following 9/11. The great thing about the educational establishment is that it's a sector of society relatively free from corporate control and the government, which is to say that it isn't totally controlled (yet) by private, profit-seeking entities. To have that subverted would be a real crime.

I think there needs to be some organizing to defend the academe against corporate and ruling class subversion and push it closer to its proclaimed values. One idea came to me when I was taking a class on Middle East politics from a faculty ally that was in our activist group. Content-wise, it was a politically-charged class, including in-depth looks at Palestine, Iran, and Egypt. There were some jocks and people from across the traditional two-party U.S. political spectrum (no other radicals), and I didn't want them to perceive the prof and class as having a sneaky liberal agenda, which would give them an excuse to discard any real insights that were to be gained, so on day 1, after we went over the syllabus, I asked, "Do you have any biases?" It turned into a 20-minute answer. She talked about some of her experiences and values. I thought getting that out front was very useful and humanizing. It put things out in the open, put us on the same page in a way, maybe b/c it made it seem like we were all participants in this endeavor we were about to undertake. It cleared the air for more open discussions and more participation from everybody.

If radical and left-leaning profs, and all those in watched areas, such as Middle Eastern studies, (or hell, how about everyone) made sure to state their own biases and predispositions ahead of time, it would de-fang accusations that lefties are trying to use the classroom to brainwash students. An "oath" seems pretty formal, but maybe there could be some kind of largely circulated agreement.  What do yall think? Other ideas?

 

Churchill was fired because he is a fraud as an academic and a bully to those he rips off. With all the problems faced by indigenous peoples for the past 500 years, the last thing they need is a charlatan like Churchill latching on and fabricating history, when more than enough real history exists to make the case. Churchill's comments on the “lil' Eichmann's” was a catalyst for his firing, but only because it caused so many people to stand up and pay attention to him; mainstream attention that he had previously avoided. Once people began looking into this guy, it did not take long to find his skeletons.

 

There is a reason that people don't take the left seriously, and it's because we are loyal to a fault. Churchill's a fraud, and whatever insight he had is more than outweighed by the magnitude of his faults. We should give him no cover or quarter.

Paul Street, we meet again. (Haven't written in awhile, the system forced me to re-register, which is unfortunate for me.)

Anyway, good to see your work here again. So, a lot of folks are understandably stuck on what Churchill wrote, which personally I found repugnant and, frankly, despicable. He had a constitutionally-protected right to say it, but I for one found (and continue to find) it horrid.

The issue is his alleged plagiarism and other such acts of "misconduct". If those prove true, certainly he should be revoked; academics must be held to a certain standard of scholarship, and of course you know that.

Some suggest this is an example of "thought control". Don't agree. This is one incident involving a particularly divisive figure in academia who happened to write something most people found shocking, disingenous, etc. He had the right to say it, ironically as an American citizen; he should not have his tenure revoked, that is on that basis alone.

Personally, I thought Churchill's essay was reprehensible and I objected and continue to object to any characterization of the 9/11 victims in the way he chose.

Though I object and find what he wrote despicable, I don't think he should be revoked of tenure, that is if we are to meaningfully defend free speech.

But, if the alleged plagiarism and other "misconduct" proves true, then yes he should be revoked, as that behavior would not fit the standard of academic professionalism.

I don't think Churchill's 9/11 essay is really the point of my post. I'm writing here more about the often oppressive culture of academe --- getting worse after the jetliner attacks ---- and what the attempted Churchill "lynching" (the person I quote using that word must remain anonymous, which is sort of my point) says about intellectual freedom in our corporate universities. There are other cases to look at. Recently, for example, the productive U-Michigan liberal-left Middle East scholar Juan Cole was denied a position initially offered at Yale because of his willingness to be openly political in the public sphere. A recent piece in The Nation shows that right-wing Yalies organized to prevent his appointment. There is apparently some effort to get some hideous criminal from the Bush administration's foreign policy efforts into the job. There are other cases and there will probably be a lot more in months and years to come. It's all pretty much what I would expect from the perspective of my own experience in and around the ivory tower, where cowardice and irrelevance masquerading as "professionalism" and "realism" were pretty much the rule (with some admittedly wonderful and enviable exceptions) long before the jetliner attacks. It's a fairly ugly and incestuous little world that generally fails its declared noble mission; the work is mainly clerical and the people are usually drop-dead dull. The mechanisms of thought control (including tenure) are incredibly advanced in universities, where authoritarian narrow-spectrum group-think (more liberal-Democratic than right-Republican in the humanities) is enforced by one committee, procedure, and process after another. Junior academicians are so justly scared of offending the various layers of academic and related broader societal authority that they have to take on pseudonyms when they publish real-life accounts of their career and related personal struggles in The Chronicle of Higher Education. People are now routinely denied acadedmic positions when Internet searches reveal that they contribute to political blogs and/or otherwise maintain a meaningfully public-intellectual life (as I think a Chronicle piece reported...it was probably published under a psuedonymn). It speaks volumes that the Chronicle piece I linked treats the frothing neo-McCarthyite nutcase David Horowitz as if he weren't, well, a frothing neo-McCarthyite nutcase. He's a "conservative activist." Please. But ok, on WC's WTC comments: as Kev. Yearwood points out, Churchill did not mean to include waitresses and janitors and the like. Despite some former and readily relinquished metropolitan notoriety as a civil rights researcher and a minor ongoing reputation within certain small sections of a small radical U.S. left, I am not in the public eye like the prolific Churchill and held no tenured academic position so not concerned about Horowitz, L. Cheney, and O'Reilly's magnifying glass. I think the Eichman comment was in poor taste, especially on the day after the tragedy. It seemed to express really over-the-top alienation (and my readers know I hardly shirk from sometimes evocative language)and bitterness --- understandable but politically stupid... pretty much daring some super-empowered right-wing punk like O'Reilly to someday take a shot and helping guarantee that he'll have millions clapping along. Being a radically democratic leftist (with some persistent Marxian loyalties that have stayed intact despite Churchill's interesting writings on Marxism vs. Indigenism) doesn't mean I should go quite that far out of my way to piss off the evil white-American majority.

To reinforce Victor's point about how much of a one party-state the U.S. has become and his related notion that it is hardly just the Republicans who link up with the business class (global capitalism) to squelch democracy, readers can take a look at the following Chicago Sun Times story (three paragraphs below) from last April. It's about the perversely corrupt relationship between the Midwestern corporate-telecommunications giant SBC and U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush, an ostensibly liberal black "Democrat" from Chicago's South Side and a former leading Illinois Black Panther (a one time colleague of the state-assassinated Fred Hampton). First some background. The onetime black militant Rush, you see, is a co-sponsor of the "Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement [COPE] Act of 2006" which passed the U.S. House last June (as ZNet blogger Mitchell Szczepanczyk reported a while back). "This controversial telecommunications legislation," Democracy Now reported, "would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight. The bill would effectively end what is known as 'net neutrality' which is the concept that that everyone, everywhere, should have free, universal and non-discriminatory access to the Internet. The bill would also cut back the obligation of cable TV companies to devote channels to public access and fund the facilities to run them. And the COPE bill would replace local cable franchises with national franchises." As Mitchell S. notes, COPE is about killing the Internet as a force for democratic discourse and activism. Here's the Sun Times piece, quite consistent with William Greider's (Who Will Tell the People, 1986)argument that corporate control of the U.S. dollar democraacy is about so much more than just the campaign "contributions" (and I hope the last "Anonymous" commenter doesn't find this all to be too much of a distraction from Iraq and Darfur): Critics blast SBC-Rush relationship April 25, 2006 BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief WASHINGTON -- An Englewood community center founded by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), a key player on telecommunications legislation, received a $1 million grant from the charitable arm of SBC/AT&T, one of the nation's largest phone companies. The chief of a congressional watchdog group says Rush's ongoing association with the Rebirth of Englewood Community Development Corporation and his role in shaping telecommunications law as a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee is a conflict of interest. Using charitable giving as a backdoor way to curry favor with lawmakers is coming under increasing scrutiny, figuring in controversies associated with former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who was forced to temporarily step aside as the ranking Democrat on the Ethics panel. On Wednesday, the energy and commerce panel on which Rush sits is set to vote on a controversial rewrite of telecommunications law co-sponsored by Rush and backed by major phone companies eager to compete with cable television companies. Rep. Bobby Rush (AP) "It is a clear conflict of interest for Rep. Rush to weigh in on this bill," said Sheila Krumholz, the acting executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which researches money in politics. "People can disagree about where to draw the line on contributions and abstaining from votes, but $1 million is definitely over that line." Rush is the only Democrat to sponsor the "Communications Opportunity Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006." He has been working with committee chair Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) to promote the "Barton-Rush" bill. Rush, asked to explain whether he had a conflict in sponsoring telecommunications legislation in the wake of the grant, replied in a statement that the "real conflict" stems from inequities in the telecommunications marketplace that hurt the poor. "It is a systemic institutional disinvestment in [the] poor by corporate America in communities such as Englewood," Rush said. "We deserve an even playing field." Final check written in 2004 The SBC Foundation grant was given to the Rebirth of Englewood CDC, a non-profit dedicated to improving the economy of the impoverished South Side community in Rush's congressional district. Rush and his wife, Carolyn, are on the board of the Englewood organization, and his son, Flynn, works for the center. Rush has been a member of the Energy and Commerce panel for more than a decade and serves on its subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. The SBC charity made the first of a series of payments totaling $1 million in 2001 to the Englewood group to create the still unbuilt "Bobby L. Rush Center for Community Technology." The final check was written in 2004, with the SBC Foundation delaying the last payment for a year over concerns that the project was not moving forward. The Rush center is now expected to open within the next 12 months. In his statement, Rush -- seeking to downplay the conflict claim -- noted that the $1 million grant "you are referring to is over a half decade old." Rush says it sparks competition Communications giant SBC Communications Inc. acquired AT&T last year and switched over to the AT&T name. AT&T spokesman Claudia Jones said the company remains "hopeful" that the center will be built and stressed its importance to Englewood residents. "The people in Englewood should not suffer because they have a congressman on the Energy and Commerce Committee," Jones said. The Barton-Rush measure gives phone companies a national television franchise and avoids the need to get approval from 30,000 local governments. Rush argues that this will provide more competition and cheaper services for low-income communities. Critics of the Barton-Rush bill counter that the bill offers no guarantees that a company would go to the expense of investing in building infrastructure to serve the kind of poor neighborhoods Rush represents. The measure was approved in subcommittee on a 27-4 vote, with 11 Democratic "yes" votes. Celia Wexler, vice president of Common Cause, another watchdog group (which opposes the bill because of threats to Internet freedoms) said, merits of the bill aside, the SBC grant and Rush's relationship with the center is "troubling." lsweet3022@aol.com

I have to say that all this is indicative of the continuing struggle on the part of the American right to completely marginalise all those who would stand against them - politically, intellectually, religiously, and economically. The marriage between the conservative nationalists (note I did not mention Republicans) and global capitalism has released a genie which will not be returned to the bottle until much blood, and pain, tears and freedoms have been shed across the globe. George Will of Newsweek mantioned recently in his commentary, "Is America Becoming a One-Party Country?", the strategy of Carl Rove, using marketing principles to influence narrow slithers of political interests - "Bush's campaign had a database called Voter Vault for microtargeting ostensibly nonpolitical constituencies.". The power of such an intensive, marketing-oriented campaign coupled with the use of government agencies at all levels to exclude those who do not believe and ferret out those who do believe and convince them to vote. And they are winning. Their influence is felt at all levels and in all corners of daily life today. They are packing the Supreme Court. They are infuencing the course of science and research and academic endeavor. They are publically crucifying anyone who questions their ways and their ideals. It's not an intellectual battle they are waging but a political battle - many of them, small ones - everywhere. Paul mentioned a great example, among many many others. George Will mentioned others. If you want to stop the "wrong" people from infiltrating our schools and universities, organise against them before the hiring decision is made and publically scrutinise them. Most hiring committees will wilt under loud and persistent pressure, especially if they perceive they will be seen as unpatriotic and purveyors of red thought. Such tactics are nothing more than a more modern, sophisticated version of the brutal Brown Shirt tactics of Hitler when he was consolidating his hold on power across Germany in the 30's. And like those days, the under-informed and ill-informed masses are falling into line, oh so easily. And that's just the beginning. The freedom we currently enjoy on this website and many thousands of others might well disappear under new legislation being proposed over the next few months. Powerful corporate forces are aligning themselves behind a total re-shape of the Internet and how it operates. For those of you who do not entirely understand what I am saying, the Internet is the last bastion of freedom of speech in the world. Let me repeat that in case you haven't understood somehow - legislation is currently being considered that could not only stifle the alternative news channels (primarilly carried by the Internet - but also, deepen the divide between the haves and have-nots, making it more and more difficult for people in rural areas to have good access to communications and making it more expensive for those in the cities. Academia are not the only ones under attack. Anyone who loves freedom is under attack - serious attack. And Paul is so right when he says that it's all connected. It's not a conspiracy - it's worse than that - it's a culture - a war culture that will devour all in its path if we don't stand for what is right, now. Cyrano hits the target dead center - we must get involved, in the news, with our congressmen, in the streets. Only the people have the real power to stop this.

The "Anonymous" who criticizes discussion of the Ward Churchill controversy as an indication of "out-of-order" left priorities is way off base. If she can't see the relationship between an incident of domestic thought control (and that's the bigger question behind the WC dismissal) and U.S. imperial policy (the critical factor behind the sectarian violence in Iraq) then she's not paying attention to the interconnectedness of events and developments. If he thinks "the left" can't walk (think, write, talk, act etc and act on foreign policy/overseas developments) and chew gum (think etc. on a case of domestic thought control) at the same time, then he has an absurdly low opinion of "the left's" members. If she thinks this blog is the sum total of "the left," then she is deluded. And if he thinks that he can pick the one or two issues that deserve discussion by "the left," than he would appear to be recommending a most un-"left" authoritarianism in setting the paramaters of acceptable debate. Pretty reactionary, actually: "there's bloodshed overseas so stop talking about little incidents of repression at home."

anonymous you could always start to march and stop your governemnet to stop sponsoring terrorism in Sudan.. We recall the kosovo bogus genocide...you has an american should stop inventing stories..

Does anyone else besides me believe that the priorities of the left in this country are a little out of order? Seriously, I think the sectarian violence in Iraq and the genocide in the Sudan are just a little bit more important than the Ward Churchill controversy or Plamegate.

Posted by Kelvin Yearwood

 

I believe this is Ward Churchill's response to Marcus Denton's c

comment:

"And, no, I did not call a bunch of food service workers, janitors, children, firefighters and random passers-by 'little Eichmanns.' It says clearly in that passage, which perhaps I should've amplified further in terms of the connotation of 'Eichmann,' because I understood people would understand as I did what Eichmann symbolized, but apparently not. [laughter] It says clearly in that passage, the reference is to a technical corps of empire, the technicians of empire."

 

Posted by Kelvin Yearwood:

Marcus Denton, you raise a good point, and I believe this is Ward Churchill's response in his own words: "And, no, I did not call a bunch of food service workers, janitors, children, firefighters and random passers-by 'little Eichmanns.' It says clearly in that passage, which perhaps I should've amplified further in terms of the connotation of 'Eichmann,' because I understood people would understand as I did what Eichmann symbolized, but apparently not. [laughter] It says clearly in that passage, the reference is to a technical corps of empire, the technicians of empire."

I'd be interested to know what Paul Street's answer to your question is. What I believe I can guarantee is that Paul's reluctance to use the 'Eichmann' comparison is not due to lack of intellectual courage, unlike the cowardice of Churchill's perhaps reluctant peers. And Churchill's demise is not due to academic incompetence or lack of integrity.

This is the propaganda model operating in one of its cruder forms. The backroom boys and girls of global corporate interests, the technicians of empire, are benevolently slaving for the progress of all of humankind, while the military is called in to do the, unfortunately, necessary if dirty work of violent intervention when johnny foreigner doesn't know what's good for him; doesn't know that the WTC was really a charitable trust working on behalf of Africa and South America etc., the latter continents particularly and  perversely experiencing growing levels of impoverishment and human catastrophe in the face of so much selfless activity, much in the way that Iraqis irritatingly fail to prosper in a bombed and devastated country. Why do they not flourish when so much largesse, of death and want is rained down upon them?

In a country which is rightly proud of its free speech traditions, Ward Churchill and his positioning has to be disposed of in some other way.

I'm curious why you would not have made the "little Eichmans" comment. B/c of its substance? Or due to some other concern, such as its invitation to be put under right-wing magnifying glasses and to go through what we're seeing now with Ward.

I remember Michael Albert writing on this, talking about how Churchill helped him understand why Marxism's ignore-ance or minimization of culture was such a deal-breaker for indigenous people who had already experienced genocide and forced assimilation. Cultural homogenization was repulsive and reactionary, nothing you would be compelled toward. I wonder if this absence of Marxist and working-class based concepts in his theoretical framework (if it exists, I'm spitballing here) contributed to his grouping of all WTC workers as "little Eichmans", without making distinctions between workers cleaning the floors, windows, and bathrooms, and the capitalists and coordinators more actively facilitating American empire's extraction of wealth from the periphery.